For many years, there has been large demand for live lobsters at areas distant from where the lobsters are harvested. To satisfy this demand, lobsters have been packaged and shipped great distances, including shipment by air transport.
In many instances, live lobsters were simply placed in large cartons, such as cardboard cartons lined with suitable insulation, for shipment. Ice, refrigerated gel packs or other cooling means were added to lower the temperature of the lobsters during shipment. Unfortunately, many of the lobsters were damaged or died during shipment in such containers due to injury resulting from their inevitable contact and smashing together caused by such handling and shipment.
An attempt to overcome such problems resulted in the shipping container described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,042,260. The container described in this patent is a carton large enough to accommodate a plurality of live lobsters with an intersecting array of partition walls introduced into the container to subdivide its interior into a plurality of compartments. Each compartment is configured to receive a single live lobster.
An improved container is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,923. The container described in this patent comprises a bottom section having a plurality of lobster holsters, each suitable for containing the body and tail of a single lobster in a manner which supports the claws of the lobster at the elbow. This container has an upper section with an interior void suitable for containing cooling means for the lobsters contained in the holsters within the bottom section of the container. The holsters provided by this container provide shock protection, hold the lobsters snugly in place in the event the box is tipped and provide supplemental thermal insulation to each individual lobster in addition to that provided by the outside walls of the container. Suspending the lobsters in the holsters of this container allows the lobsters to spread their claws providing access to the gill portions of the lobsters to facilitate the introduction of moisture and lower temperatures to the gills during shipment.
While the lobster container described in the aforementioned patents provide substantial advantages over the use of cardboard cartons and the like, they still have certain drawbacks. They are, for example, designed to contain only one specific crustacean, namely the clawed lobster, Homarus Americanus. They are not practical for shipping lobsters or other crustaceans having significant size variations nor for crustaceans having significant shape variations from Homarus Americanus, such as Spiny lobsters, crabs or shrimp.
In addition, these containers are generally limited to top-down cooling which provides uneven and uncontrollable temperature gradients between the top and bottom of the container. This can present serious problems since it is scientifically documented that temperature directly affects the health and mortality of crustaceans. Top-down cooling often results in hot spots, wide temperature swings and severe temperature gradients throughout the container. Additionally, there is no ability in these containers to regulate or provide higher temperatures for warmer water animals.
In general, these containers are designed for holding lobsters for short periods of time outside of their natural water environment. They are generally not designed for reuse and are certainly not designed to facilitate the storage of lobsters or other crustaceans in a wet holding facility. The use of such containers results in the lobsters being packed, unpacked and repacked several times between the point at which they are caught and the ultimate consumer. These containers do not have the ability to hold lobsters in sea water or a cooking vessel.